What does the Federal Gov need Harvard for? Harvard gets 16% of its funding from them - what outweighs that on the aide of the Federal government?
Lawyers? Doctors? Medical research? Thousands of highly educated graduates annually? 161 Nobel prize winners?
This is compared to a direct payment to sustain operations which the government is saying they may not be in favor of. But its not like Harvard would say ”it may not be in our interest to produce successful people anymore.”
The American university system is undeniably impactful on American success over the last century. It would be tough to put any sort of exact number on it, but we can absolutely say "a shitload".
Merit based reforms would only help. What kind of DEI programs did Harvard have 100 years ago?
I look forward to some.
This ain't it.
Amongst others, legacy admissions and discrimination against Jews, Catholics and non-whites. Let’s not pretend that Harvard’s admissions process, or American society more generally, was some kind of perfect meritocracy in 1925.
Medical research depends heavily on faculty and postgraduate folks.
Only some of their thousands of annual graduates are undergrads - about 1/3 of them, per Wiki.
Include postgraduate folks and they're still doing a lot more than just teaching and credentialing. Places like Harvard output research, too.